Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 24th, 2020

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you, Madame Chair.

Mr. LeClair, I'm actually on the Métis Nation website and have come across an article from 2015 regarding the Fair Elections Act that the former government had brought in place. In that article, it says:

The Conservative federal government's Fair Elections Act disallows Canadians from using the voter information cards they receive in the mail as proof of identity at polling stations. It also ended the practice of “vouching” in which voters with acceptable ID could attest to identity and addresses of those who lacked it.

I'm wondering if you can comment on the new legislation that came through in Bill C-76 to increase the accessibility of polling locations and to ensure that culturally appropriate electoral services were available. Can you speak to the changes made between that 2015 piece of legislation and the 2019 version and how they have affected the turnout among Métis people?

[Marc LeClair]

I think I can. This has been an endemic problem in the electoral system.

When we looked at that system to increase indigenous representation in Parliament, in 1992 there were only 12 indigenous people elected to Parliament of the 11,000 other members who came before that. We've had increases since then, but it's mainly because we've changed the electoral system to provide for majority indigenous districts, like Churchill and Churchill River—and we have Nunavut now, and NWT has a majority. The exceptions are really proving the rule. I think we find that in those jurisdictions there's greater participation. I think there's greater participation because people see themselves in the election. The biggest problem has been that it's not our system; it's not us, because we're not seen in it. We have one Métis elected in Winnipeg, which was good, and we had one before, Shelly Glover. The way to increase participation is to get Métis people participating more in the electoral process and its operation, its administration, etc. With the identity question, and because we have so many people living in poverty, you have to increase that system.

The biggest issue has been that elections are costly, and so they limit the number and the distribution of those ballot boxes. That's what this new legislation tried to do, but legislation ain't going to change the practice. You have to actually go out and change it. This election would be a good time to see whether or not expanding the number of ballot boxes would increase the participation of the indigenous population.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

In terms of the accessibility of polling locations, do you find there's been an improvement from the Fair Elections Act versus the new elections legislation in Bill C-76?

[Marc LeClair]

I think in theory it's gotten better, but in practice—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

There are still challenges.

[Marc LeClair]

There are challenges, yes.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

In your introductory remarks, you mentioned that the electoral process can be “more open to enhanced Metis participation” by embracing the “mail-in ballots”—in particular—“for a longer period of time”.

You also used the word “enhanced”. You said, and I wrote it down, “enhanced mail-in ballots”. Can you give us a sense as to how that process can be enhanced to better suit the needs of the people you represent to encourage Métis participation?

[Marc LeClair]

One of the things we've been advocating for is more use of our registries, where we have a good number of people. I know that in Manitoba, for example, there are 40,000 registered Métis citizens. That's not including the children. The information is confidential, but there are ways for us to use the registries to make sure that those people, particularly in the hinterland, receive the ballots so they can get them back in. I think we should open up discussions with the Chief Electoral Officer on all of those.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

That's a really interesting point about the registry.

On the topic of mail-in ballots—and I have been asking this question of almost all witnesses who have come before us in this study, because of what's going on down south with claims of fraudulent activity as a result of mail-in ballots—I can appreciate that your answer would be anecdotal, but are you concerned about fraudulent mail-in ballots as a result of their use? Do you think there's an increased risk of fraudulent activity from using the mail-in ballots?

[Marc LeClair]

No, Mark. We just had an election in British Columbia amongst the Métis. In our election there, we found no evidence of any problem with the mail-in ballots whatsoever.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Perfect.

[Marc LeClair]

I'm sure the Chief Electoral Officer and the systems we have in place now—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

And they did. We did have the chief electoral officer from British Columbia, who said the exact same thing. I was more interested in your personal opinion on it.

I appreciate your taking the time to answer my questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Gerretsen.

Go ahead, Mr. Therrien.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, Mr. LeClair.

I imagine that across the territory you represent, participation must vary from place to place. We're talking about nearly 400,000 Métis in western Canada.

What, then, is the participation rate from one location to another?

Do you see big differences?

[Marc LeClair]

What we find is that the Métis turnout is pretty good. In fact, during this last federal election, we had our governing members working to turn the Métis vote out. We had staff who were looking after that in each of the governing members.

We have a pretty good civic participation rate. We have a lot of Métis mayors. The Winnipeg mayor is Métis. We have good civic participation, and we're proud of that. We encourage our people to vote.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

I don't need to tell you this because you understood it long before I did, but 400,000 Métis is an extremely important democratic force. If you're well organized, you can, as you said earlier, increase indigenous representation, particularly in Ottawa.

I'd like to know the following. If we want to increase indigenous representation in Ottawa, what do you think is the most important thing to help you do that?

[Marc LeClair]

As we told the royal commission in 1992.... Senator Marchand was the chair and has now passed on. He was the first indigenous person to sit in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. I've been around for the last eight prime ministers or 18 ministers of indigenous affairs. I've been trying to find a way to increase the number of indigenous people. In the 2008 election, for example, we had nearly one million people, and we had one indigenous MP elected, and that was from the Northwest Territories.

We've been very good in the electoral system in getting communities of interest to vote together. Look at our minority language voting groups in Québec. We make sure that we draw the boundaries around them to strengthen their ability to produce people. We do that in Atlantic Canada to some degree.

The challenge for the Métis is that we're spread so far across such a large territory that there's no ability for vote concentration, except in those northern ridings. We have the Churchill and the Churchill River ridings, and we produce indigenous candidates there all the time.

We're 4% of the population in Canada, and you'd think we should have 4% of the number of MPs. I know this isn't on the subject, but we need to change the electoral system to make it more responsive to the indigenous population, for sure. There is no doubt about it.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Listen, even if it's not the topic we're addressing today, I think it's important to talk about these things because you need to have better representation of your demographic strength. I couldn't agree with you more. Since you represent 4% of the Canadian population, de facto, you should have at least 4% representation in the House.

I have the following question for you. I know that we're branching off a bit, but this interests me and I think it's important to have representation both in the vote you cast and by the politicians we elect.

What do you think a political party should do to improve your chances of representing yourselves?

[Marc LeClair]

We started by trying to increase representation in the national political parties. Back in the day, I was involved in writing the policy for the Liberal Party to guarantee representation of aboriginal people in that party. That came into effect in the election between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin—the first one. Those 158 guaranteed electors got to vote on the leadership.

We worked with the national Conservative Party. They had the Conservative committee. They didn't do anything in their constitution, but they at least were paying attention to it.

The NDP doesn't do anything structurally, but they're very friendly policy-wise to indigenous Canadians.

The Bloc and the others are a little bit different because there are bigger challenges sometimes in Quebec on some of those issues.

When we say “enhancing participation”, it should be everywhere. We want to participate in all of these processes; it shouldn't be marginalized to just one party. It should be everybody making an effort.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Mr. Blaikie, you have six minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much to our witness for joining us. I'm coming to you today from Manitoba, the homeland of the Métis nation.

You may well know that we're having a rough go of it right now with COVID, and the province is locked down quite severely. What we're studying here at the committee are the potential risks, not just public health risks, but the risk of disenfranchisement as a result of holding an election during a pandemic. We want to learn as much as we can about what those risks are. I'm just wondering if we can hear from you on what you think are the particular barriers that Métis people may face as a result of the pandemic, and if you have a few concrete action items you think the committee ought to recommend to government to take to reduce or eliminate those barriers as best we can in the circumstances. Those would be very much appreciated.

[Marc LeClair]

That's a very good question.

I know Manitoba better because my family comes from Saint Lazare, Manitoba, and I've been working with the Manitoba Metis Federation and President Chartrand to address the pandemic issue. I'll say a few things.

First, we live in crowded conditions. We thought if it hit us, we needed to find places for the people to isolate, so we bought seven tiny homes, moved them around the province, made those available. We turned our work camps, which we had for Bipole III and Enbridge line 3, into isolation camps. President Chartrand made those available to the province last week, I think, because they were going to use other....

One thing we need to share in a pandemic is our resources. That's number one.

Two, this pandemic showed how vulnerable health-wise the Métis population is. We were able to do food security. Our camps are full of food in case that's needed. We can isolate, but Métis per se have no real access to the health care system, whereas first nations have at least the nurses, etc. In part of our national work, we were trying to move on this to create these Métis health hubs in the province for cultural safety—just better care, better results from care.

We don't have a good relationship with the premier, and that's well known, but we realized that the provincial health care system is straining. Our proposal was for Canada was to say, okay, let's use the resources to transition, to create these health hubs, and then in the long term have them funded by the provincial health care system. We were looking to transition those sorts of things.

Then we also asked for resources for our most vulnerable only—only for for those under a certain income level and those who are older to have non-insured health benefits so they weren't making trade-offs between food and medicines.

One of the lessons we've learned from this pandemic is the need to move to create that health infrastructure for Métis.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

When it comes to the role of political parties, I know you'd mentioned in your opening remarks the need to enhance communication to Métis electors on the positions of political parties. I recognize that there you're making a general comment not just about pandemic circumstances, but I wonder what some of your thoughts are on how parties might best do that.

Both generally and then specifically within a pandemic context, what are some of the things that parties ought to be aware of as they conduct outreach, so that they can do it better?

[Marc LeClair]

It all starts at the top. I do a lot of work for the Métis nationally, and also provincially. Quite frankly, and maybe it's partly our fault, too, we need to reach out to the leadership of the parties and to have that dialogue. We've had it with the Prime Minister, because we've had that permanent bilateral process, but especially in this type of election, it's important for the leaders to meet and discuss, and then go from there.